Wild Caught Specimens From A Brackish River, How Much Flex In Salinity

[s357nl45fc762r]

I understand this question is too wide to answer truly, I will narrow it down as much as I can right now, but I am still on the search to identify the species I unknowingly picked...So I have what appears to be a sand colored camo blenny and a black and white Goby, of what species I do not know. From this very little information, can I get a safe estimate on what salinity they can handle? There is also a pistol shrimp from the local river (same place as other specimens), and a very young Ram bought from the pet store. Any several tiny crabs (Blue, Spider, Stone). Any help or advice or constructive criticism is MUCH appreciated, this is a new aquarium and i'd like it to thrive.

EDIT: This specimens were all picked off of the same place in a Brackish River in Brevard County Florida, I took a couple of loose "life" laden rocks from the shallows, and on them are barnacles, brown and green plant material and the 2 fish I described, which I didn't even know were there at the time of the picking.


If you need more information to reply just ask, I would be glad to do what I can.

 

[Darkehorse]

I understand this question is too wide to answer truly, I will narrow it down as much as I can right now, but I am still on the search to identify the species I unknowingly picked...So I have what appears to be a sand colored camo blenny and a black and white Goby, of what species I do not know. From this very little information, can I get a safe estimate on what salinity they can handle? There is also a pistol shrimp from the local river (same place as other specimens), and a very young Ram bought from the pet store. Any several tiny crabs (Blue, Spider, Stone). Any help or advice or constructive criticism is MUCH appreciated, this is a new aquarium and i'd like it to thrive.

EDIT: This specimens were all picked off of the same place in a Brackish River in Brevard County Florida, I took a couple of loose "life" laden rocks from the shallows, and on them are barnacles, brown and green plant material and the 2 fish I described, which I didn't even know were there at the time of the picking.


If you need more information to reply just ask, I would be glad to do what I can.

Practically speaking, can't you just get a water sample from the river they were collected and test the SG of it? Barring photos, the identification will be hard (Neale M can probably give you a good idea though), so it seems like your safest bet would be to match the salinity at the collection spot.

As for Rams, AFAIK they are completely freshwater, although they may tolerate a certain level of salinity, it wouldn't be ideal for them.

-Darke

 

[nmonks]

As Darkehorse above says, rams are a definite no-no in the brackish water aquarium. As far as I know they are entirely confined to soft, acidic waters and do not do all that well in hard, alkaline water, let alone brackish water.

As for IDing your beasts, without pictures, impossible. Even with pictures, not really possible. I had a job a marine biologist doing benthic surveys once. We'd go through samples identifying the shrimps, worms, etc for the purposes of environmental monitoring on behalf of oil companies. Contrary to what some people thing, identifying marine organisms is extremely difficult because there are so many of them and most are identified to species level by very subtle differences visible under a microscope. This is especially true for juvenile animals.

When keeping native marines, the best you can do is make a note of what you catch, and then record whether it does well or not in the aquarium. Next time, you will know whether or not to collect that type of animal again. As a rule, small benthic fish (like gobies) do well, open water fish (like marine halfbeaks) do not. Of the crustaceans, most hermits, shrimps, and crabs do well, whereas most spider crabs and barnacles do not. With molluscs, intertidal snails do not do well and nor generally do bivalves. Subtidal snails usually do very well provided they are not specialist predators. Echinoderms are a mixed bag but brittlestars in particular seem to thrive in aquaria, probably because they are scavengers more than anything else.

As for salinity, your goal has to be to match the ambient salinity of the environment where you collected them. I would not expect any of your animals to thrive at less than SG 1.010 in the long term, and even then I'd still go for 1.012-1.015 to maximise the range of animals that did well.

Hope this helps, Neale